Broken Arrow
by The Anonymous Coward
Summary: Clone Syaoran seems to be gone, leaving only Real Syaoran and a lot of hurt. But when souls are split, strange things happen... leaving C!Syao a lot closer to Sakura than she thinks. SxS, Angst, Rating for Language. Revised for clarity.


_Tsubasa and all related characters are not owned by me. If they were, they would have by now been turned into cyborgs which transformed into the heads of giant shape-changing alien robots in a only-moderately-successful marketing gimmick from twenty years ago and the series would now be named Transformers: Tsubasa. Optimus Prime would end their Fei Wong problem very very quickly, I assure you. _

...the movie sucked.

Not terribly surprising. Most things suck these days.

They would for you, too, if you had to do what I do.

Sakura's fallen asleep next to me. Not leaning on me, next to me. Exhausted. Truth be told I wasn't up for watching much, either, but watching the flickering talking box was better than listening to the silence, realizing I wasn't feeling her breath blowing on my neck like I had so often before.

Odd. Something that didn't touch me is possibly the thing that hurt me more than almost anything else combined.

It all started all those worlds ago -- heh, wasn't so long ago, really, but it feels like a lifetime ago.

Probably because in a way, it WAS a lifetime ago. Or a body ago. Or something, I don't know. I don't know about a lot these days. But that's not quite where it really started. It started elsewhere. Of course, it didn't start any more pleasantly, that'd be too damn easy.

Ever wonder what it might be like if you were split in half? Not your body, but your soul? Sliced right down the middle like a damn sandwich? Yeah. I can't say I ever did, either, but I know how it feels now. And I have to say, not good. At all.

In fact, it's hard to think of something else that feels less pleasant. And yet, I did it, to give that clone of me a soul. Well, I can't quite say /I/ did it, given the circumstances, but, at the same time, I did.

And so the clone goes running around, falls in love with a girl, and ends up spending a life with her, until one day for some dumb reason the clone ends up uncovering the one most horrible buried temple that happens to be a massive trigger that tears HER soul into itty bitty teeny weeny tiny pieces and scatters it hither and yon, only it's not hither and yon, it's everywhere across the damn multiverse. So Cloney, as I've come to call him privately - yeah, I'm a hell of a lot less reverent these days, at least in my head - goes chasing around those bits and pieces. Never wondering if maybe, just MAYBE he ought to keep his head up, that something was a little fishy about all this, or maybe a LOT fishy, and if he'd paid more attention to things maybe things wouldn't have all gone to hell.

But, of course, he didn't, and the damn seal that kept his heart in there separated.

Of course, there's one thing Kurogane, Fei, and Sakura will never tell anyone about that. Why? 'cuz they don't know just yet. With my luck, they never will. I wish to every god in the universe they did, though.

And what'd that be?

Well, when I was talking about the split down the middle? Well, it turns out there's one thing that's worse than having your soul cleaved down the middle.

Having it not cleaved down the middle. Leaving one teensy tiny little thread, like one of those weird little threads of gumbits that causes a tooth to hang when it's about to fall out and hopefully at that time you're six and hoping for the tooth wraith to come and leave some yen under your pillow.

And of course, that would also, as these things often do, allow your arch nemesis and soul cleaving hackjob a great way to spy. And when the seal breaks on the little spy, leaving Cloney TOTALLY under arch nemesis's control, that bond is still there, even if the soul chunk isn't.

Ever stretch out a rubber band too far and have it suddenly explode back and nail you in the eye?

Yeah. that's about what happened here. Only instead of a rubber band and an eye, it was two halves of a soul, smashed right into each other, like a couple of pieces of clay launched out of a cannon, splattering and smashing and becoming one in the most violent and traumatic way possible.

And did I ever mention that, suddenly having two lifetimes of memories smashed together, especially with one unable to move or just about anything else but listen and watch without being able to do a damn thing about it, leaves someone a little... I dunno, what'd the natives call it...

Batshit?

Yeah. Batshit. As in batshit insane.

Oh, it was easy to keep myself together for Cloney, try to talk him out of it, hoping at least some chunk of me was still in there, but I knew that I'd have to decapitate the little drone as soon as he let his guard down even if he did. But the aftermath was probably even worse - namely being told by the Time-Space Bitch (or, wait, Witch? Ooops, my mistake! Not.) that if I went and, you know, TOLD EVERYONE THAT THE GUY THEY WERE GRIEVING FOR, I.E. ME, WAS SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO THEM (and oh by the way you FINALLY REMEMBERED SAKURA I believe we HAVE A MAKEOUT SESSION RESERVED JUST ABOUT NOW), that Fei Wong would probably be able to figure it out with what was left of the spy bits in me and send someone to finish the job?...

...well.

Let's just say, I hope one of these worlds we land on has a good shrink sometime soon.

Of course, I doubt that any of them have experience in treating someone who's living a bad comic book, and is currently one person who was cut into two halves, one half placed in a clone body, the other placed in a giant pickle jar, then their souls smashed back together after several years - and to make it all the more complex, his empty clone body is now trying to take over the multiverse or what-the-fuck-ever Wong is up to. Of course, considering this damn place maybe I'll get lucky, and this is something that happens all the time, and they can give me little orange pills that make it all better and we'll have group therapy sessions with Sakura and Kurogane and Fai (only I can't because I CAN'T TELL THEM and I think Kurogane would shit a brick at it anyway but it might be worth bringing up just to see the look on his face).

If not, though, I hope they're pretty flexible, otherwise I'm screwed with a capital S. 'cuz pretending to be normal, well-adjusted little Syaoran-The-Jar-Boy-Who-Didn't-Have-Two-Halves-Smashed-Into-One-And-Has-To-Kill-His-Other-Half is getting to be FREAKING HARD.

...though, as I look to Sakura's sleeping form... I know that I'll keep it up as long as I have to, or at least, as long as I can.

Meh.

Broken Arrow. That's what the movie was caused. I dunno if it's actually a true phrase or whatever, these nuke-you-lar bombs seem to have a lot of lingo attached to them. Not surprising since they can blow up a city - I have no idea where the hell the natives thought up THAT one. Geniuses. But it occurs to me... my old body... Hein... all of it's body memories and skills... all are dangerous. And a good chunk of it is probably specially engineered to be able to use feather power whenever Fei Wong gets his hands on enough...

...shit.

I'm a Broken Arrow. That's what they called it when some terrorists got one of the nuke-you-lar bombs. It won't blow up any cities... but with that thing's attitude, Empty Cloney just might manage to reduce their population enough for it not to matter.

I almost laugh at the irony, though I settle for slapping myself in the face. The sound almost disturbs Sakura, whose eyes flutter...

...dammit, just when she was starting to remember...

...hell with it. I lean over, lick my lips, and press mine to her's, holding it for a moment. I flick my tongue out just the tiniest bit to taste her lips. I don't know if it's my imagination but I think that I might feel her mouth open just the tiniest bit as well, in response.

I pull away. She didn't even stirr. In fact... I think it let her settle back down into deep sleep, a bit of a smile on her face. First I've seen in weeks.

I sigh.

Wong, or whatever you want to call yourself?... your days are numbered. I'm going to gut you like a pig if it's the last thing I do... or my clone does. Puppet or not, that... thing... is crazier than I am, and maybe Wong'll forget to turn off Cloney's Kill-O-Matic instinct and turn his back and the wrong moment, and two problems will be solved at once, very permanently at that.

And maybe I'll win the Super-Duper-Lucky-7 Lotto for however million of the local money I can't do a damn thing with on the next world, which means I lucked out on a lifetime supply of toilet paper.. But neither is that likely, so I'll just have to do the job myself.

Until then though there's little more that I can do other than watch over my girl (I wish) and the best friends a world-hopping punk kid could ever have, and hope maybe I can hint to them that Cloney isn't quite so far away after all.

And hey, insane or not... it's better than being in a tube. Maybe I'll win this one yet.

Optimism. Getting soft, buddy. But maybe for tonight, I can live with it. Hell, I pretend to be sane... how bad can it be?

Don't answer that.

_Yeah, my allergy for angst was acting up again, and I figured, hey, why not? It's a far cry from Naive Not Stupid or my other stories (which I'm still eager for reviews from - not a shameless plug, no). I would be shocked if this is actually how it turned out to be, but, heck, weirder has happened. This is CLAMP after all. Comments and criticism welcome. As a note I think I butchered some of the canon bits here and there, mostly the exact sequence of events involving the clone's escape, but I might get those in another editing round. It's 7 AM, I've been up all night and I wanna post this while I have the courage, so! _

_ Edit: I was told via reviewer that this is a little unclear. Sometimes I do that by accident, but as Syaoran is kind of whacked out of his gourd, it may be unavoidable here. As such, here's the deal - when Syaoran's heart/soul/whatever was split, it actually stayed connected on some level. When the seal broke for the clone, like a rubber band, the connection snapped back, smashing them into a single being, and according to Yuuko's warning, if he starts letting the others know this directly, whatever Fei Wong used to spy via Clone Syaoran might be triggered and let Wong know what's going on, allowing Bad Crap (TM) to happen. As such we now have a soulless Clone Syaoran body being used as Fei Wong's puppet - but more importantly, who the main group thinks is Real Syaoran is in fact a COMBINED Syaoran with the memories, soul-halves and personality of BOTH Syaorans, in Real Syaoran's body, who's painfully aware Sakura remembers, having to watch her suffer, and the rest of the group suffer... and since half of him was kept in a jar for years, unable to move or do anything, he's a little bit, um, crazy. Not crazy like the now-soulless C!Syaoran - he's still a good guy - but crazy enough, and a little ticked he has to keep hiding it. I put in a few revisions to make this more clear.  
_


End file.
